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T Magazine

T's Dec. 5 Holiday Issue

Highlights

  1. Hayao Miyazaki Prepares to Cast One Last Spell

    No artist has explored the contradictions of humanity as sympathetically and critically as the Japanese animation legend. Now, at 80, he’s coming out of retirement with another movie.

     By Ligaya Mishan

    Hayao Miyazaki photographed outside his atelier near Studio Ghibli in Tokyo on Oct. 4, 2021.
    CreditTakahiro Kaneyama

  2. Tony Kushner, Oracle of the Upper West Side

    When Steven Spielberg asked Kushner, America’s most important living playwright, to take on ‘West Side Story,’ he thought, ‘He’s lost his mind.’ But he dared.

     By A.O. Scott

    Tony Kushner photographed at the Astor Place subway station in New York City on Oct. 22, 2021.
    CreditSean Donnola

  1. These Are Not Your Traditional Holiday Wreaths

    A new generation of female florists are offering a fresh perspective on an ancient craft, fashioning festive crowns out of dried flowers, herbs and grasses.

     By Noor Brara

    An assortment of wreaths handmade exclusively for T by, from left, Kitten Grayson, using foraged branches, old man’s beard, dried beech, dried gomphrena, thistles, dried dahlias and dried helichrysum (similar styles at kittengrayson.com); Worm, using onion bulbs and skins, dried allium flowers and Irish linen (similar styles at weareworm.com); the Flower Appreciation Society, using honeysuckle vine, dried grasses, dried ammi seed heads, larch branches and dried hops (similar styles at theflowerappreciationsociety.co.uk); Flowerbx, using calamagrostis rose (similar styles at flowerbx.com); and Willow Crossley, using eucalyptus, parvifolia, pink wax flower, red berries, echinops, berried populus, baby blue eucalyptus, helichrysum and limonium (similar styles at willowcrossley.com).
    CreditPhotograph by Andrew Vowles. Set design by Vicky Lees

  2. In Brussels, a Designer’s Home Awash With His Own Vibrant Creations

    Christoph Hefti makes — and lives with — ebullient carpets and textiles inspired by magical realism and Latin American design.

     By Gisela Williams and Frederik Buyckx

    In the textile designer and artist Christoph Hefti’s living room, a pair of vintage chairs, a poncho hand-embroidered by Cooperativa Chiwik and Hands Catching (2017), a rug of his own design.
    CreditFrederik Buyckx
    Home and Work

  3. The Humble Beginnings of Today’s Culinary Delicacies

    Many of our most revered dishes were perfected by those in need, then co-opted by the affluent. Is that populism at play, or just the abuse of power?

     By Ligaya MishanPatricia Heal and Martin Bourne

    Conway Pearl oysters and Maine lobster — two types of seafood that were once so plentiful they were undesirable, which have since skyrocketed in cost as they’ve become rarefied delicacies.
    CreditPhotograph by Patricia Heal. Styled by Martin Bourne
    Food Matters

  4. At Long Last, Onscreen Portrayals of Lesbian Relationships Are Getting Complex

    The shift comes after decades of stories that minimized romantic love between women as fruitless, or as some kind of phase.

     By Maya Salam

    Naima Green’s “Untitled (Riis)” (2017), part of a series the artist made at New York City’s Jacob Riis Park, an L.G.B.T.Q. meeting ground. “I’m thinking about queer waterways,” she says. “The ways that the beach is or can become a site of freedom, pleasure and transience for queer people and how we connect.”
    CreditCourtesy of Naima Green
    Social Studies

  5. A Collector Who Fills His Los Angeles Home With Carefully Sourced Clutter

    Jonathan Pessin has stuffed his apartment with the fruits of his obsessive search for the “best, weirdest version” of seemingly everything.

     By Kurt Soller and Philip Cheung

    The objects and furniture dealer Jonathan Pessin’s eclectic collection overflows into his Los Angeles home. In the dining area, from left: a six-foot fiberglass Coke bottle, circa 1970s-80s; an Alexander Calder-esque multicolored metal hanging fish sculpture; a painting by the artist and furniture picker Robert Loughlin, drawn with Sharpie on the back of a vintage painting; an industrial metal cabinet in original green paint with red handles that holds smaller items; and a life-size papier-mâché sculpture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. An amateur metal sculpture of Darth Vader sits atop the cabinet.
    CreditPhilip Cheung
    By Design

  1. The Canonization of Saint John Coltrane

    The intensity of the jazz legend’s music has always inspired passion, but in the 1960s, one group of devotees was so stirred they founded a church in his name.

     By M.H. Miller

    John Coltrane, photographed by Chuck Stewart in New York City, 1966.
    Credit© Chuck Stewart Photography, LLC/Fireball Entertainment Group
    histories and happenings

  2. Looking at Surrealist Art in Our Own Surreal Age

    When viewed as a vehicle for various forms of liberation, the movement remains highly resonant even a century after its heyday.

     By Kate Guadagnino

    Koga Harue, “Umi (The Sea)” (1929), included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new “Surrealism Beyond Borders” exhibition.
    CreditThe National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
    Notes on the Culture

  3. On Japan’s Pacific Coast, an Artist Communes With Nature

    At his retreat near Isumi, Kazunori Hamana creates humble yet imposing ceramic vessels that evoke the world around him.

     By Hannah Kirshner and Ben Richards

    The living room of the artist Kazunori Hamana’s oceanside studio just outside Isumi, Japan.
    CreditBen Richards
    The Artist’s Life

  4. When Polka Dots Signal Both Optimism and Disquiet

    The motif has long been associated with a certain brand of American cheeriness but, as its recent ubiquity attests, is most visible during times of turbulence.

     By Nick Haramis

    Prada cardigan, $2,750, shirt, $3,800, and bag, $1,850; Emilio Cavallini tights, $28; and model’s own earrings.
    CreditPhotograph by Mara Corsino. Styled by Kate Lanphear
    Notes on the Culture

  5. What Comes Next for an Artist Whose Work Goes Viral?

    With the animated video series “2 Lizards,” Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki captured the essence of 2020. Now, Bennani’s at work on a documentary about living in limbo.

     By Sasha Weiss

    Meriem Bennani, photographed in Brooklyn, N.Y., on September 25, 2021.
    CreditCheril Sanchez
    Arts and Letters

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  1.  
  2. Letter from the Editor

    In a World of Pure Imagination

    Two very different visionary artists, Hayao Miyazaki and Tony Kushner, are both famed for creating fantastic, fully realized worlds that also reflect our own.

    By Hanya Yanagihara

     
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  4. First of Its Kind, Last of Its Kind

    Dior’s Iconic Bar Jacket Inspires Anew

    The house’s latest variation on the originally wasp-waisted style, which revolutionized postwar fashion, relies on a centuries-old Greek embroidery technique.

    By Lindsay Talbot

     
  5.  
  6. The Thing

    A Chandelier Fit for a Disco

    To create this fixture, the artist and designer Bethan Laura Wood mixed painted metal and PVC to kaleidoscopic effect.

    By Nancy Hass

     
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